Some scholars have argued that political Islam—a plethora of different movements aimed at replacing the current political order in Muslim nations with an Islamic one—has failed to achieve its ends and has been disintegrating for some time. Hence, Gilles Kepel, professor of Middle East Studies at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris argues in his book, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam:
For all its political successes in the 1970s and 1980s, by the end of the twentieth century, the Islamist movement had signally failed to retain political power in the Muslim world, in spite of the hopes of supporters and the forebodings of enemies. The waning of the movement’s capacity for political mobilization explains why such spectacular and devastating new forms of terrorism have now been visited on the American homeland. As we will see in the chapters that follow, September 11 was an attempt to reverse a process in decline, with a paroxysm of destructive violence.1
This assessment has some plausibility. Osama bin Laden, for example, has publicly stated that two of his goals in pursuing violence are to: 1) provoke discrimination and retaliation against Muslims by Westerners that will turn Muslims against the West and 2) encourage jihad against the United States by demonstrating that it is a paper tiger.2
Even if we grant Kepel’s claim, however, the sophistication and violence of the September 11 attacks alone indicate a potent and frightening threat. That threat is magnified when one considers the number of extremist Muslims who are not only willing but trained to promote the cause of political Islam. A joint inquiry recently completed by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees found that the Al-Qa'ida terrorist group trained between 70,000 to 120,000 in Afghanistan before the coalition invasion of 2002.3
It is by no means clear, however that political Islam is a waning force. It is still making gains worldwide. For example:
- Although Afghanistan’s fundamentalist government was overthrown by the coalition invasion of 2002, fundamentalist regimes remain in power in both Iran and Sudan.
- Even in Afghanistan, it is far from clear that fundamentalist rule is a thing of the past. Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House and a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom warns that, despite the overthrow of the Taliban, Afghanistan “is in imminent danger of being reconstructed as an Islamic state under hard-line sharia law.” Although President Karzai has appointed a diverse cabinet, his appointment to head the national supreme court, Fazul Hadi Shinwari, is publicly committed to implementing hard-line sharia. Shinwari has told the international press that under the new government, adulterers would be stoned, the hands of thieves amputated, and consumers of alcohol given 80 lashes. Regarding evangelists, he told reporters that the new government is obligated to “punish them for propagating other religions—such as threaten them, expel them and, as a last resort, execute them.”4
- In national elections in late 2002, voters in secularist Turkey “gave a resounding victory” to a political party with deep Islamist roots, which is “certain to cause jitters in the West and Israel over this strategic country's future direction.5”
- Also in late 2002, voters in Pakistan swept a coalition of pro-Taliban religious parties into power in that country’s North West Province, which borders Afghanistan. The province, one of four major provinces, is now in the process of enacting Sharia law. The religious parties also did better than expected in the populous southern port city of Karachi and the southern part of the Punjab province.6
- In Nigeria, 12 states have adopted or declared their intent to adopt Sharia as their supreme law, in violation of Nigeria’s national constitution. The declarations have led to riots and massacres that have left thousands dead and many more homeless. Nigeria is a major source of oil imported by the United States.
- The notion of implementing Sharia has enjoyed increasing popularity in Malaysia despite the national government’s opposition to it. Two state governments, in Terengganu and Kelantan, are actively seeking to implement full Islamic criminal law. Malaysia’s growing economic clout is indicated by the fact that it is “the exporter of most of the world's Dell laptop computers and Intel high-end processors.”7
- In 2002, the national Indonesian government allowed one of its provinces, Aceh, to enact Sharia, Islamic law.8 Moreover, in the nation’s capital, Jakarta, a scientific poll in December 2001 found that “58 per cent of the respondents said they support an Islamic government based on the Quran and Prophet Muhammad's teachings and run by Muslim clerics.” It also found that 79.6 per cent think the government should outlaw groups that follow other faiths (than Islam).9
These examples show that political Islam is far from being a spent force. As Bassam Tibi, professor of international relations at the University of Gottingen, Germany, aptly summarizes, “Certainly, Islamic fundamentalists will not be able to impose their ‘order’ on the world, but they can create disorder on a vast scale.”10
Of course, not all Muslims are fundamentalists or sympathizers. They are probably not even a majority. But nobody really seems to know. Moreover, because of Muslim religious sensitivities—which differ vastly from Western religious sensitivities—the number of fundamentalists and sympathizers could shift dramatically under the right circumstances.
Bernard Lewis, Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies (Emeritus) at Princeton, makes a keen observation in this regard:
[M]ost Muslim countries are still profoundly Muslim, in a way and in a sense that most Christian countries are no longer Christian. … [I]n no Christian country at the present time can religious leaders count on the degree of belief and participation that remains normal in Muslim lands. In few, if any, Christian countries do Christian sanctities enjoy the immunity from critical comment or discussion that is accepted as normal even in ostensibly secular and democratic Muslim societies. Indeed, this privileged immunity has been extended, de facto, to Western countries where Muslim communities are now established and where Muslim beliefs and practices are accorded a level of immunity from criticism that the Christian majorities have lost and the Jewish minorities have never had. Most important, with very few exceptions, the Christian clergy do not exercise or even claim the kind of authority that is still normal and accepted in most Muslim societies.11
Lewis sums up, “Islam is not only a matter of faith and practice; it is also an identity and a loyalty—for many, an identity and a loyalty that transcend all others.”12
Because of this, the line between political Islam and “moderate” Islam is disturbingly thin, and any perceived threat to Islam—or even perceived criticism—could push moderates into sympathy and cooperation with the fundamentalists.
That could happen more easily than many Westerners realize. Writing in 1998 about the Gulf War and its aftermath, Tibi observes:
Few in the West are aware that most Muslims outside the West view the Gulf War as a clash between their own civilization and that of the West. The fact that books and articles expounding this view are still being published by Muslims years after the Gulf War supports the observation that most Muslims continue to believe that the war was a “crusade of the West” against their civilization.13
Fundamentalists have used every Western intervention in the Muslim world (and some non-interventions, such as occurred for awhile in Bosnia) as an opportunity to brand Westerners as “Crusaders.” And they apparently have done so with success.
